LOS ANGELES – A reality show producer fighting extradition to stand trial on a charge he killed his wife in Mexico has introduced statements by his young daughter to contradict police witnesses and the theory his wife was killed in their hotel room.
Attorneys for Bruce Beresford-Redman claimed Monday in a court filing that Mexican authorities "rushed to judgment" to build a case against the former "Survivor" producer and that the aggravated homicide case against him is built on speculation and assumptions.
They are asking a federal judge to reject returning Beresford-Redman to Mexico to stand trial.
The 24-page filing includes statements by a therapist who has interviewed the couple's 6-year-old daughter and says the child didn't see their father hit her mother on an April 2010 vacation.
Beresford-Redman's wife, Monica, was found dead in a sewer at a swank resort days after other guests said they heard loud fighting coming from the room the couple shared with their young children.
The therapist reported that the young girl told her that her parents were playing a loud game the morning that Monica Beresford-Redman disappeared and that accounted for the noise coming from the room, the filing states.
"`Mommy and Daddy did not yell at each other and never hit each other,'" the therapist reported Camila Beresford-Redman told her. "`Mommy and Daddy never hit each other anywhere, any time.'"
The therapist signed a sworn declaration stating she asked the girl several questions about her family's trip to Mexico earlier this month, and that the girl seemed credible.
"In my opinion, Camila did not appear to be embellishing or making up the information she gave me," wrote Cathleen Carlson, a licensed family and marriage therapist for 12 years.
"It was very clear to me that she had not been exposed to any physical abuse between her parents," Carlson wrote.
U.S. federal prosecutors have cited a statement Bruce Beresford-Redman allegedly made later to a hotel clerk in which he admitted he and his wife had been arguing.
Mexican authorities have also cited statements from a resort worker who reported seeing Beresford-Redman attempt to strike his wife.
Prosecutors have also cited an extramarital affair that Bruce Beresford-Redman was engaged in as a motive for killing his wife. While the producer's attorneys acknowledge that motive "the strongest piece of evidence," they state that forensic evidence found in the couple's hotel room doesn't support the theory that Monica Beresford-Redman was killed there or that her husband dragged her body to the sewer.
The Emmy-nominated producer and co-creator of "Pimp My Ride" has been jailed since November, when he was arrested on a fugitive warrant. He has denied killing his wife and his attorneys have repeatedly blasted the investigation into Monica Beresford-Redman's killing.
In their filing on Monday, they cited other instances of violence against tourists in Cancun, citied drug violence in the region and called the Quintana Roo state "a cesspool of political corruption."
Beresford-Redman's extradition hearing is scheduled for July 12.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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